Title: The Lovers Year: 2021 Size: 70 x 50 cm (unframed) Technique: Acrylic paint, charcoal and white pastel on recycled canvas All famous artists have a work called ‘The Lovers’, and this is mine. It’s easy to point to artists and writers who have built their lives around intentional exploration of alternative relationships. Look at the lyrics of popular songs or read some classical poetry: the phrases we choose to describe romantic love don’t really sound all that pleasant. “Crazy in love,” “love hurts,” “obsession,” “heartbreak”…these are all descriptions of mental or physical illness. The feeling that gets called romantic love in mainstream culture seems to be a heady cocktail of lust and adrenaline, sparked by uncertainty, insecurity, perhaps even anger or danger. While the color of romance is red -passionate love, seduction, violence, danger, anger-, I choose blue to challenge the contradiction. The color blue has positive effects on the mind and the body. As the color of the spirit, it invokes rest and can cause the body to produce chemicals that are calming and exude feelings of tranquility. And above all, it helps with balance and self-expression. I believe that like (blue) water, you and whatever person has caught your fancy can flow together as long as you let it happen in the way that is fitting to you both. If you’re curious about the ways in which alternative relationships played out in times when there was even less support than there is now, you can read up on the Bloomsbury group in early twentieth-century England and about freethinkers like Vita Sackville-West, Harold Nicholson, George Sand, H. G. Wells, Simone de Beauvoir, Alfred Kinsey, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Artist: Brigit Law Loman